Welcome to Episode #3 of BrightTakes, Brightfind's first video series!
In these videos, I'll cover different elements of creative design, along with answers to frequently asked client questions I receive as the Creative Director at Brightfind. If you have a burning question that you'd like me to discuss, leave it in the comments section. Enjoy!
Transcription:
Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of BrightTakes. My name is Vince Tardy and I’m the Creative Director at Brightfind. Today I’d like to talk to you about 2016 design trends. Now with any trend, it’s important that it’s grounded in solid design principles. Used correctly, it can elevate the overall experience of your site and help you to stand out in an increasingly crowded field. With that in mind, let’s get started.
1. Google's Material Design Elevating Flat Design
It’s been around for a few years, but Material Design incorporates things such as depth, movement, and context aware interactions. So expect to see more of those things.
2. Motion Animation Elements
This is something you’re going to be seeing more and more of. Motion is a very natural way to draw the eye and it’s a great way to call attention to a call-to-action, menu item, or any other sort of element, so expect to see more of that.
3. Context Aware Interactions
An example of context aware interactions would be menus that appear whenever the user needs them. They help the user to take an action in line. Also, it allows the user to immediately see the results of an action.
4. Responsive Design
Responsive design is still going strong, and there are those who say if your site isn’t responsive, it feels broken. So expect to see the trend of responsive design continuing well beyond 2016.
5. Web Design Taking Cues from App Design
Next are web designs that are taking cues from app design. If you’ve taken a look at a website on a mobile device, you'll notice the way that it behaves and looks is really starting to blur the line with native apps, particularly because of the incorporation of motion, depth, and the increasing power of modern browsers, allowing sites to become more robust and more sophisticated. So expect to see more sites taking their cues from app design.
6. Typography
The current design landscape is starting to look fairly homogenous because of an increasing focus on best practices, responsive design and the proliferation of Bootstrap-based templates. Using solid design principles — typography in particular — is a great way to establish clear visual hierarchy and really surface the personality of the site. You’re going to start seeing more and more of this approach. In the hands of a skilled designer, typography can really make the difference between a well designed site to a site that’s really engaging and very interesting.
So that’s what I see coming up for 2016. I’d be really interested in hearing what you see coming on the design landscape for 2016. You can tweet us @brightfind, and I really hope to hear from you soon. Thanks!
